Ooh, this is an opportunity to drop one of my favorite etymology facts:
“Hyper” and “Super” both come from exactly the same Greek root, υπερ. But the words entered English via different routes – once through Latin, where the Proto-Greek word entered Latin (or probably more correctly, proto-Italic) before the debuccalization of an initial /s/ and the conversion of upsilon’s /u/ sound to /y/ (giving “super”), then again directly into English from the later classical Greek after these changes had occurred – debuccalization had modified word-initial /s/ into /h/ (yielding “hyper”).
(You actually see this pattern all over Greek and Latin roots: hex- and sex- for six, hemi- and semi- for half, herpet- and serpens- for snake… Anyway, debuccalization between proto-Greek and classical Greek is the culprit.)
(Disclaimer, I am at best a hobby etymologist and NOT a classicist so I probably have some of the details a bit rough around the edges here.)
